Google will stop scanning Gmail content for ad personalization

Google has decided to bring the consumer version of Gmail in alignment with the G Suite version of its widely popular email service, which is great news for the billion-plus users around the world. In a recent blog, after bragging about how popular its G Suite business has become amongst the enterprise community, Google announced that it would no longer scan consumer Gmail content for any ad personalization.

Currently, the free version of Gmail will scan the contents of your inbox for topics and then deliver relevant ads within Gmail. The example Google uses on its support page on the topic is if you've received a number of messages about photography or cameras, it might send you a targeted ad for a deal at a local camera store. Once the change happens later this year, Google will still deliver ads within the free version of Gmail, but they will be based on the ads settings associated with your Google Account, which adds topics you may like based on the things you consume or search for on other Google products — the videos you watch on YouTube, for example

This decision comes after Google saw G Suite usage more than double among large business customers over the past year, and as the total number of Gmail users continues to grow, adding over 200 million new users since Google announced it had surpassed 1 billion in 2016.

If you're interested to see how Google has been customizing the ads it shows you, you can go into your Google Account settings and check out the section on ads. You'll see a list of topics Google has determined you like based on your browsing habits, as well as a list of topics you don't like, which might be completely empty if you've never browsed through these settings before.

Whether you love how accurate Google's targeted ads have become and want to make them even more specific to your interests or find it creepy and want to scale things back a bit, It's definitely worth your time to take a gander at these settings.